Difficult Customers
by Aenlic
Summary: I&II&III&IV&V The Tenkans are buying flowers... Poor florist.


**Difficult Customers**  
(or:_ Difficult Customers are Gonna be Difficult Customers)  
_

* * *

She should have, she decided on hindsight, made it a policy to sell only one sale a day. If she had made that long ago, she wouldn't have need to spend an hour waiting for the man to make his mind up. 

Already, she had suggested all the flowers she knew ( for those she didn't, she checked them up in the flyer ) but each name was met with some reason, one or another, coming down in the end to her customer not knowing what his lover would like.

_It's just a goddamned flower_ was what she would have indeed liked to say to him, but unfortunately store policy meant that the customer was always right, even if he was too stupid to be right.

That was when she decided Stupid would be the name given to him. It sounded right.

"Daisies?" she suggested for the fifth time that day.

"They look... funny."

"Roses?"

"I think they're a little overused."

"Tulips?"

"No, uh, what about those-"

She glanced unwillingly at the blossoms before sighing. "Purple orchids are usually for the dead, sir."

"...oh. The white-"

"- ones are also a sign of mourning," she finished.

She decided it wasn't her place to mention that every single sort of flowers could be used for mourning - but, seriously, to want to buy orchids for Valentine's Day was... Was... There it was again, that urge to bruise her forehead on the table until the pain carried her away.

The man - she had decided also not to call him a customer until he actually brought something - fidgeted a little. "I really don't know what to get him," he admitted.

"He'll-" She paused. _Him_. Right... _Right_. "Just get him roses! Everybody loves roses, everybody! If he doesn't like it, hell, get him chocolates,_ anything_!"

He looked taken aback. "Roses? But they seem so..." The man was now eyeing said blossoms in distaste.

"Please," she pleaded, "trust me, he'll like them, please just buy them and go-"

"I'll take a dozen-"

And before he could finish his sentence, she handed him a ready-made one and told him it would be thirty dollars. Or a thousand in potch.

He gave the latter and she rejoiced inwardly, bidding her customer goodbye-

Only the door opened from the outside and yet another male stepped in.

She should have really made it a store policy to serve one customer a day.

"What the hell are you doing here?" her customer asked, cradling the flowers in his hands.

"Buying flowers," the second man said in a rather matter-of-fact voice.

"A punk like you?"

"You brought roses?"

"What's it to you?"

"Nothing," the second man said, but it was obvious he was trying his best not to laugh.

"Why, you brat-"

"I believe you're making her cry."

She wasn't crying, really. All she had done was bury her head on the table, shaking, trying not to weep at her misfortune. She should have really changed the store policy, she should have really quickly announced the store was close, she shouldn't have bothered with trying to help her customer choose flowers...

"It's probably your face!"

"Your whiny voice."

"The he-"

In the midst of their argument, she stood up, slammed the top of the desk, snatched another ready-made bouquet, slapped in into the second man's arms glared. "A thousand potch," she demanded and was delighted when the man handed her the money just like that-

They were staring, but that was fine.

"Out," she growled. "_Now_."

And they fled.

The silence returned and it was much better now.

She smiled happily before heading for her desk, rummaging inside the drawers for the close sign. There was a much needed, well-deserved break calling-

"Excuse me, I would like to purchase some flowers."

The new would-be customer was a woman dressed in black, some strange dress...

Sighing, she resigned herself to serving the lady. At least the woman wouldn't give her trouble.

...she hoped.  
**_  
fin.  
_**

**Notes:** I get inspiration from the strangest things, this one being: "gee, 'em Tenkan are difficult customers". I think Zerase wouldn't make too large an impact on the florist, however - though she was a little freaked out by the woman not using a door.

My florist muse (unnamed) is currently hiding. I have no idea where this shop is, or who the 'narrator' is, or why Ted and Luc and Zerase are buying flowers. They just are.


End file.
